


And I'm a Lionheart

by eudaimon



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The things that she likes about Don Keefer, in no particular order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I'm a Lionheart

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 2x05. First time writing either of these characters. Title is from "King and Lionheart" by Of Monsters and Men.

Recently, she's started noticing that there's something strange about the way Don looks at her. Half the time, he doesn't look at her at all - his eyes sort of skate over her, like he's scared of looking at her for too long. It reminds her of what boys were like in high school when it had felt like pretty plus awkward plus really fucking clever had added up to something like poison. Sloan had been eighteen before she lost her virginity; it had taken a goddamn age of man to find a guy brave enough to take her to bed. (There have been other men since then. Obviously. Some of them have been more deserving of her time than others).

But there's something strange about the way that Don looks at her (when he _does_ look at her) and she can't quite seem to put her finger on what it is. It's infuriatingly inconsistent, too; most of the time, he looks at her like they're friends but then there's odd moments when there's something softer, denser too. _You're impressive_ , he says and she wants desperately to kiss him but she loves that they've been sitting in the floor for the guts of an hour and he hasn't once tried to touch her, hasn't tried to hold her hand or put his arm around her or anything. Men are always trying to fix you by _touching_ you and isn't that what got her into this in the first place?

Jesus.   
But she would like to kiss him, right then. She would like that more than anything.

So she guesses what she's saying is that it's complicated - the way he looks at her, everything that comes next.

*

Scott says her name, but she doesn't look back. She hits the sidewalk and keeps walking - Newsnight will be into the F block pretty soon and Don will need to be in the control room and she's back in the running order, so they haven't got much time.

And fuck Scott, anyway.

"Wow," she says, back in the building, leaning against the wall in the elevator, heading up. "Is my hand supposed to hurt like this? I've never punched anyone before but it _really_ hurts."

"Been a long time since I punched anyone in the face," says Don. (Sloan wonders if he's ever punched anyone in the face in real life or whether he's just thought about doing it, nursed red hot fantasies of doing it. She wonders if he'd have punched that guy, punched Munch, if he'd been standing right there in front of him? Like everything about him, sometimes, it's difficult to tell). "Let me look."

She holds out her hand so it's her choice when he finally touches her and its just his hand holding hers, his thumb brushing along knuckles that are already starting to bruise but Sloan feels it, this sudden ache in her belly, between her legs and the first thing, the absolute first thing that she thinks is, _there's no way to see this coming_.

"What're you doing after 11.30?" She asks him in the heartbeat after the elevator doors open but before either of them move.  
.  
"Going home to bed," he says and there's that look again - very particular and strange. Nobody else in the world looks at her quite like Don Keefer does. "Why?"  
"Because I want to go with you. Please. I would really, really like that."

Sloan racks her brains and tries to remember if she ever saw him look at Maggie like he's looking at her right now. His mouth is actually hanging open.

"No?" she says.

He shakes his head.

"Not, no, no. Emphatically not no." He swallows, and she thinks _you're a thirty-something year old man, Don Keefer. Do it. Man up._

She leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth, just gently.  
Rage gives way to something else entirely. Absolutely no-one sees it happen.

*

Don's apartment is surprisingly nice; she doesn't know what she was expecting. What she gets is a cluttered desk that looks lived in, good prints on the wall, a spill of low light as he walks ahead of her turning on lamps. He makes a bee-line to the fridge and grabs a couple of beers, opening them before he brings them back.

"I'll..." He frowns, takes a sip of his beer. "I'll make up the couch. I...blankets. Sheets. I have those. Pillows."  
"You don't have to," she says.  
"You can't just sleep on a bare couch," he says. "I know I can be an asshole, but..."  
"No," she says, shaking her head. "You don't _have_ to."

She watches him get it. Watches it start to sink in. She drinks most of the rest of her beer in what feels like one swallow, straight down - Gd, she needed that. She needs all of this, every single thing that's happening here. She puts down the bottle and steps in. Don watches her, eyes wide in the low half-light.

What she likes best about Don Keefer, in no particular order: that he's smart (smart enough not to be threatened by knowing that she's smarter but, shit, she's smarter than a lot of people), that he's funny, and sweet, that he knows when he's being an asshole (and, about half the time, he feels bad about it), the way he looks at her, the way he talks to her, the way he acts like he doesn't have blanket permission to touch her any time he wants, the way he looks at her, the way he...

She leans in and kisses him, and the kiss tastes mostly of beer, cold, sharp but it's _good_ , too. She wraps her arm around his neck to hold him to it. His bottle rests against her ass as his arms creep around her waist. After the day that she's had, it feels good to choose something, entirely _choose_ it from the heart.

"Wow," says Don, staring at her. "Wow. Jesus."  
"Come on," she says. From where she's standing, she can see his bedroom.  
"We don't have to. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would _love_ to, I want nothing more than this, but tonight? Of all nights? I...need you to be sure, Sloan. You need to be sure."

(Later, she'll look back and know that that, right there - that was the moment when she knew it was possible to fall in love with a man like him).

"I'm sure, Don," she says, and she steps away from him, pulling her shirt over her head in one go. For work, she wears plain underwear, well structured, neat. It occurs to her to wish that she was wearing something _prettier_ the first time that he's seeing her like this, but then she realises that none of that matters. Because Scott was a fucking asshole, right there on top and, because of him, the whole goddamn internet has seen her naked but she can forget about that as long as it's just black cotton, her and him and this.

Don sits on the foot of the bed and watches as she strips, down to her underwear and then she leans down, starts on his shirt buttons. Kissing as she does it is awkward but they make it work.

"Did you look at them?" she asks him, breathless between kisses, almost in his lap, her hands pushed into his hair to pull his head back because, more than anything, she needs to feel powerful, right now. She needs to be the one in control.

He shakes his head.

"I heard about it, I got Neal to block it in the office," he says. "I've been with you the whole time. When could I have locked?" He frowns. "Jesus, Sloan, he did a horrible fucking thing - it'd be horrible if he did it to anyone, but he did it to you. Why the _hell_ would I have looked, when you're right here?"

He said that she was _spectacular_. She wants to feel like she's worthy of that.

They fuck in the middle of Don's still-made bed, Don on his back and Sloan on top, completely naked, completely exposed but, with his hands on her hips to anchor her, she can't remember ever feeling this _safe_.

He looks straight at her until almost the end, when his eyes close and his head tips back and a shiver goes straight down her spine.

Yeah, and maybe she feels spectacular too.

Don comes before she does, one hand on her ass, the other on her hip. She watches him tremble his way through it, still moving against him, needing just a little bit more. He pulls her down with a hand on the back of her neck, kisses her hot and desperate as he squirms his other hand between them, giving her exactly what she needs without her having to ask for it.

God, it's great.

Afterwards, they lie tumbled together, Don's arm behind her head, their legs tangled at the knees and she turns her head and kisses him.

She fumbles in her bag and grabs her phone, holds it at arm's length to take a photo of them both, flushed and smiling, touching at the temples. She likes it much better than the last photo that she took. 

"What did we just do?" he asks her.  
"I don't know," she says. "It's a start."


End file.
